UN says 75,000 children a day have become refugees - as it happened

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Street scenes in Ukraine show anti-tank hedgehogs scattered across the historical district of Odesa while apartment buildings are seen in ruins from the aftermath of Russian missile attacks in Kyiv.

Sandbags seen lining the entrance to buildings protect infrastructure in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro.

Here is a look at how some of the UK papers have covered the day’s developments in Ukraine:

On the topic of Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, an inquiry into the granting of his Portuguese citizenship has led to the opening of disciplinary proceedings against employees involved in the process, Lusa news agency reported on Tuesday.

The Russian billionaire was granted Portuguese citizenship in April 2021 based on a law offering naturalisation to descendants of Sephardic Jews who were expelled from the Iberian peninsula during the mediaeval Inquisition.

There is little known history of Sephardic Jews in Russia, although Abramovich is a common surname of Ashkenazi Jewish origin.

The inquiry by the Institute of Registries and Notary (IRN), which provides nationality and passport services, was launched in January amid criticism from some activists, commentators and politicians who said the law must be reviewed as they believed it was being used by Russian oligarchs to get a foothold in the EU.

IRN, which did not immediately reply to a Reuters request for comment, told Lusa that, following the initial investigation, disciplinary proceedings were opened but said details of it were confidential.

It did not say on how many employees were targeted.

A second inquiry into the granting of citizenship to Abramovich was opened in January by the Portuguese prosecutor’s office and his citizenship could be stripped depending on its outcome.

A rabbi responsible for issuing a document needed to obtain citizenship was reportedly arrested last week.

Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich sat at the top table of English football for nearly two decades after buying Chelsea in 2003. But as David Conn explains, the issues that led to sanctions being imposed on him last week by the government have been in plain view for years

His transformed the club from perennial underachievers to a major force in European football that has since won every major tournament the continent offers. But right from day one, as the Guardian’s investigative reporter David Conn tells Nosheen Iqbal, there have been questions about the origins of his wealth – as well as his closeness to the Kremlin.

Following the invasion of Ukraine, Abramovich was last week placed on a list of individuals to have sanctions imposed upon them by the UK government, meaning that all his assets in Britain were frozen – including Chelsea FC. With the club now in crisis and up for sale, Conn looks back on what the Abramovich era has meant for English football, and why the authorities are only taking action now.

US secretary of state Antony Blinken has predicted there will be an independent Ukraine “a lot longer than there’s going to be a Vladimir Putin,” as the Russian president continues his unprovoked invasion.

In an interview with CNN on Tuesday, Blinken said:

First of all, there’s going to be a Ukraine, an independent Ukraine a lot longer than there’s going to be Vladimir Putin.

One way or the other, Ukraine will be there and at some point Putin won’t.”

Blinken said the US is trying to prevent as much death and destruction as possible right now.

The real question is how much death and destruction is wrought by Russia’s aggression in the meantime, and that’s what we’re working as hard as we can to limit, to stop, to put an end to the war of choice that Russia is committing.

We’re doing that through the support we’re providing Ukraine every single day. We’re doing that by the pressure we’re exerting against Russia every single day.”

The Ukrainian military has just released its daily operational report, claiming Russian military leadership has approved the “early release” of cadets to fight in combat against Ukraine.

According to the report released by Ukraine’s ministry of defence, Russia is having trouble providing its troops with ammunition and “has lost (completely destroyed, or lost ammunition) 40% of units involved in operations on the territory of Ukraine”.

“The worst situation remains in the area of Mariupol, where the opponent tries to block the city in the western and eastern outskirts of the city,” military officials from the general staff of the armed forces of Ukraine added.

The Ukrainian parliament convened on Tuesday to pass laws on economic innovation and fiscal policy relaxation aimed at saving jobs and allowing Ukrainians to continue working wherever it’s possible, Zelenskiy has confirmed.

We introduced 0% excise duty and 7% VAT on fuel in order to stabilise prices and ensure continuous supplies. The regulation of business has been simplified. We reduced the activity of regulatory bodies so that there were no inspections for businesses that are working within the Ukrainian law and don’t violate consumer rights.

A new law is also giving guarantees to members of the territorial defence and volunteers. They will be recognised as combat veterans. We approved a decision to continue the martial law to effectively defend our country.”

More images of the destruction in Kyiv have emerged.

Ukraine’s state emergency services also published footage of rescue operations, describing 13 fires throughout the city caused by the shelling on Tuesday.

The United Nations has said that since the war in Ukraine started on 24 February, every day 70,000 children in Ukraine have become refugees.

“That is equivalent to 55 children fleeing the country every minute, according to UNICEF — nearly one every second,” said a UN spokesman.

UNICEF spokesperson James Elder told a press briefing at the Palais des Nations in Geneva:

Since February 24, scores of children have been killed in Ukraine. Many more have been injured and more than 1.5 million children have fled the country.

Putting this last statistic another way, on average, every day in Ukraine from the start of the war, more than 75,000 children have become refugees. Every day.

This last number is particularly shocking. Every single minute, 55 children have fled their country.

That is, a Ukrainian child has become a refugee almost every single second since the start of the war.

This refugee crisis is in terms of speed and scale, unprecedented since the Second World War, and is showing no signs of slowing down.”

US President Joe Biden is expected to announce an additional $800 million in security assistance to Ukraine on Wednesday, a White House official said as reported by Reuters news agency.

The administration last week announced $200 million in security aid for Ukraine bringing he total available funds approved during Biden’s presidency to $2 billion.

We will have more on this story as it develops.

The US Senate has unanimously passed a resolution condemning Russian President Vladimir Putin as a war criminal, a rare show of unity in the deeply divided Congress.

The resolution, introduced by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and backed by senators of both parties, encouraged the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague and other nations to target the Russian military in any investigation of war crimes committed during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Reuters quotes Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in a speech on the Senate floor ahead of the vote:

All of us in this chamber joined together, with Democrats and Republicans, to say that Vladimir Putin cannot escape accountability for the atrocities committed against the Ukrainian people.”

The aftermath of Russian missile strikes at residential districts in Kyiv can be seen in the photos below.

Russian troops intensified their attacks on the Ukrainian capital with a series of powerful explosions rocking residential districts on Tuesday.

In a national address just before 2am local time, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has provided a more optimistic view of the positions of Ukraine and Russia at upcoming peace talks.

Meetings continue. I am told that the positions at the negotiations sound more realistic.

However, more time is still needed for decisions to be in the interests of Ukraine.”

Hello it’s Samantha lock back with as my colleague Mannvi Singh signs off for the day.

It is day 21 of the war in Ukraine. As usual, for any tips and feedback please contact me through Twitter or at samantha.lock@theguardian.com

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has given a late-night national address inviting all friends of Ukraine to visit Kyiv.

It can be dangerous here, because our sky is not yet closed from Russian missiles and planes. The decision to strengthen our arsenal in the air has not yet been approved. We did not get any planes. But the views of all the people of the world are now focused on our capital, on Ukrainians.

So everyone who is with us will be appreciated. Not only ours, but also other nations.”

Daniel Boffey and Jennifer Rankin in Brussels:

During a press conference in Kyiv alongside Zelenskiy, the leader of Poland’s ruling party said an international peacekeeping mission should be sent to operate in Ukraine.

“I think that it is necessary to have a peace mission - Nato, possibly some wider international structure - but a mission that will be able to defend itself, which will operate on Ukrainian territory,” Jaroslaw Kaczynski said during the conference, which was broadcast on Polish television.

“It will be a mission that will strive for peace, to give humanitarian aid, but at the same time it will also be protected by appropriate forces, armed forces,” said Kaczynski, who is seen as the main decision-maker in Poland.

WSJ reports:

President Biden is expected to announce more than $1b in new military assistance to the Ukraine government as early as Wednesday, according to U.S. officials, as Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, is expected to make a plea to Congress for more aid to defend his country.

The $1.01b is expected to include more of the same kinds of military equipment the U.S. says the Ukrainians need the most: antiarmor and antiair systems, including portable air defenses such as Javelins and Stingers. The money would come from the roughly $13.6 billion allotted for Ukraine in the omnibus budget bill Biden signed Tuesday.

While the White House is considering sending more troops to Europe to add to the roughly 15,000 deployed there since the Russia-Ukraine crisis began, Mr. Biden isn’t expected to deploy more troops now, U.S. officials said.

“We’re moving urgently to further augment the support to the brave people of Ukraine as they defend their country,” Biden said Tuesday, without providing additional details. “And I’ll have much more to say about this tomorrow about exactly what we’re doing in Ukraine.”

Boris Johnson will be visting Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates on Wednesday to ask the Gulf states to produce more oil and help the UK reduce dependence on Russian oil.

The AP reports:

In a statement released by his office Tuesday, Johnson called Saudi Arabia and the UAE “key international partners” in his bid to wean the West off Russian oil and gas, improve energy security and coordinate action against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The controversial visit has sparked an outcry of protest from UK lawmakers and rights groups, coming just days after Saudi Arabia said it executed 81 people in the largest known mass execution in the kingdom’s modern history.

Johnson planned to meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed in the United Arab Emirates, then travel to Saudi Arabia for a meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He is expected to talk about increasing Gulf energy supplies as well as discuss international coordination in dialing up diplomatic and economic pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“The UK is building an international coalition to deal with the new reality we face. The world must wean itself off Russian hydrocarbons and starve Putin’s addiction to oil and gas,” Johnson said in the statement. “Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are key international partners in that effort.”

Daniel Boffey and Jennifer Rankin in Brussels report:

Volodymyr Zelenskiy told reporters “with allies like this we will win this war” after the prime ministers of Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia made a perilous train journey to Kyiv to offer their support.

The comments from Ukraine’s president followed an extraordinary meeting with the three EU leaders in a capital which is close to being encircled by Russian forces. They are the first western visitors to Kyiv since the war began two weeks ago.

In footage of the meeting posted on social media, Zelenskiy was heard briefing the EU leaders on the latest military and humanitarian situation and the negotiations with Russia.

“They are shelling everywhere,” Zelenskiy is heard telling them. “Not only Kyiv but also the western areas.”

He also informed the Czech, Polish and Slovenian prime ministers, Petr Fiala, Mateusz Morawiecki and Janez Janša, that three Chechen brigades had been identified among the Russian forces.

Zelenskiy expressed gratitude for their visit, calling it a “powerful testimony of support”.

On arrival in Kyiv, after a three-hour journey, a photograph of the three men, and Poland’s deputy prime minister Jarosław Kaczyński who had accompanied the leaders, was published of them studying a map of Ukraine in a wood-panelled room in an undisclosed location.

Morawiecki tweeted: “It is here, in war-torn Kyiv, that history is being made. It is here, that freedom fights against the world of tyranny. It is here that the future of us all hangs in the balance. EU supports Ukraine, which can count on the help of its friends – we brought this message to Kyiv today.”

Fiala tweeted: “The aim of the visit is to express the European Union’s unequivocal support for Ukraine and its freedom and independence.

“At the same time, we will present a broad package of support for Ukraine and its citizens during the visit. The international community has also been informed of this visit by international organisations, including the United Nations.”

In statements from their respective capitals ahead of the meeting with Zelenskiy, it was said that they would be offering their support to Ukraine’s president as representatives of the other 24 EU heads of state and government.

Janša tweeted: “Europe must guarantee Ukraine’s independence and ensure that it is ready to help in Ukraine’s reconstruction.”

Read more:

Ten percent of the world’s wheat comes from Ukraine - will war change that?

As the world watches oil and gas prices soar – the next big shock could hit the dinner table. Collectively, Russia and Ukraine are responsible for more than a quarter of global wheat exports and for around 80% of the world’s supply of sunflower oil. Russia — along with ally, Belarus — is also a huge source of fertiliser, accounting for around 15% globally.

The war in Ukraine will undoubtedly have a major impact on its agricultural production and exports, putting even more pressure on a system already in crisis. Madeleine Finlay speaks to food policy researcher, Dr Joseph Glauber, about what the war will mean for the supply and cost of food around the world

Listen:

A Kharkiv resident reached out to the Guardian’s Luke Harding today about damage that his office sustained from a Russia missile and share his thoughts on Russia’s invasion:

Kharkiv resident Oleksandr Sokil, who is 52, says the holes in the front door are caused by cluster munitions dropped by Moscow on residential areas. “The tactic is to kill as many Ukrainian civilians as possible,” Sokil told the Guardian.

The Russian army has pulverised Kharkiv since Vladimir Putin’s February 24 invasion, following a failed attempt to capture the city, Ukraine’s second biggest.

Video has been posted to social media of Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy meeting with the prime ministers of the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovenia today amid Russia’s war on Ukraine.

From journalist Hanna Liubakova:

#Ukraine In Kyiv, President @ZelenskyyUa met with the prime ministers of Poland, Czechia and Slovenia. This is an important gesture of solidarity and support from foreign leaders

Here is more information on the two Fox News journalists, Oleksandra Kuvshynova and Pierre Zakrzewsk, whose deaths were confirmed in Ukraine today from the Guardian’s Emma Graham-Harrison in Odesa, Martin Pengelly and Richard Luscombe:

Two Fox News journalists – producer Oleksandra Kuvshynova and cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski – were killed in the attack outside Kyiv which injured correspondent Benjamin Hall, the US network and its journalists confirmed on Tuesday.

Fox News in a statement only announced the death of Zakrzewski, an Irish citizen. Ukrainian officials and Fox News reporters confirmed that Kuvshynova was also killed in the attack.

“RIP Pierre and Sasha,” the Fox News Pentagon correspondent, Lucas Tomlinson, wrote on Twitter, using a diminutive name for the producer, and sharing a recent picture of the two, smiling with Hall.

Zakrzewski, 55, and Kuvshynova, 24, died “as a result of artillery shelling by Russian troops in the north-eastern part of the village of Gorenka”, Ukrainian website kp.ua said.

The news follows the death in Ukraine on Sunday of Brent Renaud, an American film-maker, who was shot in an area near where the Fox journalists were attacked.

Fox News had announced Hall’s injury on Monday, the reporter “was injured while newsgathering outside of Kyiv in Ukraine”.

Read the full article here.

The US will be giving Ukraine over $186mn in additional aid to support refugees fleeing the country and displaced within Ukraine amid Russia’s ongoing invasion, said US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, reports Reuters.

More from Blinken following his meeting earlier today with Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba:

Spoke with Ukrainian Foreign Minister @DmytroKuleba today. I reaffirmed the United States’ continued support for the Ukrainian people and commitment to hold Putin accountable for his unwarranted and inhumane bombardment of Ukraine. #UnitedWithUkraine

A second Fox News journalist, Oleksandra “Sasha” Kuvshynova, was also killed in Ukraine during the same attack that killed Fox News cameraman Pierre Zakrzewsk and left Fox News correspondent Benjamin Hall wounded, confirmed the network today.

Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott informed Fox News staff today, writing:

In our effort to keep you updated on yesterday’s tragic events, we wanted to report that journalist Oleksandra ‘Sasha’ Kuvshynova was also killed alongside our cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski when their vehicle was struck by incoming fire yesterday while in the field with Benjamin Hall...

Sasha was just 24 years old and was serving as a consultant for us in Ukraine. She was helping our crews navigate Kyiv and the surrounding area while gathering information and speaking to sources. She was incredibly talented and spent weeks working directly with our entire team there, operating around the clock to make sure the world knew what was happening in her country.

Our team in Ukraine tells me that Sasha had a passion for music, the arts and photography and was a joy to work with. Several of our correspondents and producers spent long days with her reporting the news and got to know her personally, describing her as hard-working, funny, kind and brave.

Her dream was to connect people around the world and tell their stories and she fulfilled that through her journalism...We held off on delivering this devastating news earlier today out of respect for her family whom we have been in touch with throughout and we extend our deepest condolences to them.

MPs from across the continent have voted to expel Russia from the Council of Europe over the invasion of Ukraine in a further sign of the Kremlin’s estrangement from the western democratic order.

The vote has huge symbolic value, although is also something of a formality, after Russia announced earlier on Tuesday that it was quitting Europe’s leading human rights organisation, effectively jumping before it was pushed.

MPs from the Council of Europe’s 46 other member countries voted for a resolution that said: “In the common European home, there is no place for an aggressor”.

Russia’s withdrawal from the organisation, created in the ashes of world war two to protect peace and human rights, is a highly symbolic moment. The Council of Europe, which Russia joined in 1996, devised the European Convention on Human Rights and played a role in promoting democracy in central and eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Russia’s withdrawal means it will no longer be party to the convention on human rights or subject to judgments of the European Court of Human Rights. Russian citizens and human rights activists will be denied the protection of the court, although Moscow often ignored the judgements.

As MPs from across the continent denounced Russia’s brutal war in Ukraine during a debate in Strasbourg, the Council of Europe urged Russia in a tweet to release opposition leader Alexei Navalny and fulfil a judgment from the court of human rights.

In a draft version of the text MPs voted on, the Council said:

The Assembly deplores that, despite the many appeals to cease the hostilities and to comply with international law, the Russian leadership has persisted in its aggression, escalating the violence in Ukraine and making threats should other States interfere. Through its attitude and actions, the leadership of the Russian Federation poses an open menace to security in Europe.

After the Russian government submitted a formal letter of withdrawal, Leonid Slutsky, head of the International Affairs Committee of Russia’s lower house of parliament, accused the Council of “Russophobic hysteria” and claimed it had become a satellite of Nato and Washington. Writing on his Telegram Channel, he said Russia would “need to denounce” the European Convention on Human Rights, adding: “But don’t be afraid. All rights will be guaranteed in our country, necessarily and unconditionally.”

For many civilians in Ukraine, continued shelling during Russia’s ongoing invasion has completely destroyed apartment buildings and other residences, forcing many to flee.

Here’s reporting from the Guardian about residents in Kyiv’s Podil district:

Residents in Kyiv’s northern Podil district came home to destroyed flats after a 5am blast on Tuesday morning hit Ukraine’s capital.

Daria Kloichko’s flat was strewn with glass and most of her family’s personal items were destroyed. A refugee from the 2014 war in eastern Ukraine against Russian proxy forces, she and her husband hugged and cried seeing the damage.

She and other residents told the Guardian that they had heard an uptick in shelling between the two sides over the past two days as Kyiv has announced a 48 hour curfew after attacks on residential areas in the north-west and east of the city

Around 29,000 people were evacuated from multiple Ukrainian cities using humanitarian corridors today, with a majority fleeing Mariupol, reported Reuters.

A total of around 29,000 people were evacuated from Ukrainian cities through humanitarian corridors on Tuesday, most of them leaving the besieged port of Mariupol, said a senior government official.

Senior Ukrainian presidential official Kyrylo Tymoshenko said in an online post that about 20,000 people had left Mariupol in private cars. Ukraine earlier accused Russia of blocking a convoy trying to take supplies to the city.

The US Pentagon released more updates on the war in Ukraine today as the US defence secretary, Lloyd J Austin III, and his team travel to the Nato headquarters in Europe.

From the Washington Post’s Dan Lamothe:

Russia is launching airstrikes against civilian targets “with increasing frequency” in Kyiv, according to a US senior defence official.

From Foreign Policy’s national security reporter Jack Detsch:

NEW: Russia is striking civilian targets in Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv “with increasing frequency”: senior U.S. defense official.

Russian forces are still about 10 miles to the northwest of the city and about 12 miles to the east, officials said.

US president Joe Biden just signed a funding bill that will provide a record $13.6bn in aid to Ukraine amid Russia’s ongoing invasion, tweeted Biden recently.

From Biden’s twitter account:

I just signed the Bipartisan Government Funding Bill into law — keeping the government open and providing a historic $13.6 billion in funding to Ukraine.

Russia will withdraw from the Council of Europe, the continent’s leading human rights watchdog, the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement today.

The statement reads:

The states of Nato and the European Union, abusing their majority in the Council of Europe (CE), are consistently turning this organization into an instrument of anti-Russian policy, refusing equal dialogue and all the principles on which this pan-European structure was created.

The Council of Europe, whose brief is to uphold human rights and the rule of law and is separate from the European Union, had suspended Russia’s membership on 25 February, the day after it invaded Ukraine, Reuters reports.

On Monday, the Ukrainian prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, urged the council to expel Russia, telling the assembly that those responsible for “this unprovoked and unjustified aggression cannot stay in the single European family where human life is the highest value”.

More than 600 buildings have been destroyed in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the city’s mayor, Ihor Terekhov, said.

In a televised interview today, Terekhov said:

Schools, nurseries, hospitals, clinics have been destroyed. The Russian army is constantly shelling (us) from the ground and the air.

Here’s more on the reports that patients and staff at a hospital in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol have been taken hostage by Russian troops, according to local officials.

Around 400 people are understood to be at the regional intensive care hospital, according to Mariupol’s deputy mayor Sergei Orlov.

Orlov described the hospital as “our biggest hospital” and said Russian forces were “using patients and doctors like hostages”.

He told the BBC:

We received information that the Russian army captured our biggest hospital … and they’re using our patients and doctors like hostages.

We can confirm this information and also the governor of Donetsk region has confirmed this confirmation. We received information that there are 400 people there.

Local officials also claimed Russian troops were forcing residents in nearby buildings out of their homes and into the hospital.

Regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said a hospital worker had managed to alert the authorities about the situation.

The hospital employee was cited as saying that hundreds of people from nearby houses were forcibly moved into the hospital.

The Russians forced 400 people from neighbouring houses to come to our hospital. We can’t leave.

Russia’s foreign ministry said the US president, Joe Biden, and a dozen other top officials have been banned from entering the country in a reciprocal response to US sanctions.

In a statement, it said the measure, which also applies to the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, “is the consequence of the extremely Russophobic policy pursued by the current US administration”.

Also on the list are the US chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Mark Milley, the national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, the Central Intelligence Agency director, William Burns, the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden’s son, Hunter.

The ministry warned Moscow would soon announce additional sanctions against a range of “Russophobic” US officials, military officers, lawmakers, businessmen and media personalities.

The prime ministers of the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovenia are scheduled to meet with Ukraine’s president Vlodomyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv this evening.

The three premiers travelled to the Ukrainian capital by train today in a show of solidarity with Ukraine, Reuters reports.

Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, posted pictures of him with the Czech Republic’s PM, Petr Fiala, and Slovenian PM, Janez Janša, in Kyiv, where “history is being made”.

The Italian army issued an order for its territorial units to boost training “oriented towards warfighting” referring to the “well-known” international events, Lorenzo Tondo reports.

The order, released in a note and dated 9 March, cites also the “need to maintain the highest levels of efficiency of all tracked vehicles, helicopters and artillery systems”.

The army said the note was intended only for internal use, Italy’s news agency Ansa reported.

Here’s more on the US president, Joe Biden, travelling to Brussels next week to meet the leaders of the Nato alliance and the European Commission.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced the travel plans at today’s press briefing.

She said the US president would attend the Nato summit on 24 March to discuss ongoing deterrence and defence efforts related to Russia’s invasion and reaffirm the United States’s “ironclad commitment” to the alliance.

Psaki told reporters:

I expect he will share more of those details in the next 24 hours.

Biden will also join a previously scheduled EU council summit to discuss Ukraine, including efforts to penalise Russia and provide humanitarian support to Ukraine, she added.

Nearly 2 million refugees have fled Ukraine to Poland, where a massive humanitarian aid effort is under way. But some people are going the other way, returning to Ukraine with aid, to collect family members or to fight.

We spent a day meeting those queueing to cross back into Ukraine, unsure what they will find there.

Russians will be banned from importing many designer clothes, jewellery, handbags and racing horses from Europe, under the latest round of EU sanctions, Jennifer Rankin reports.

The EU is banning the export of most luxury goods to Russia, including precious stones, watches, horses, caviar and fur. Such restrictions apply only to a handful of countries, such as North Korea and Syria, highlighting Russia’s deepening isolation from the global economy.

EU officials said the ban on luxury goods was designed to target wealthy, well-connected Russians, rather than ordinary citizens. All items under €300 are excluded and there are varying thresholds for different categories of goods, for example cars under €50,000 are excluded.

The measures were announced as part of the EU’s fourth round of Russia sanctions, which also includes personal sanctions on billionaire Roman Abramovich and the head of Russia’s TV Channel One, Konstantin Ernst.

The EU is also banning Russian steel imports, denying Moscow revenues from a product category worth €3.3bn in 2021. However, some of Europe’s big industrial producers, including Germany and Italy, successfully won exemptions, so the ban will not include iron ore, palladium and nickel. The steel import ban will only take effect after three months to allow existing contracts to be concluded, whereas the luxury goods ban comes into force almost immediately.

Poland and the Baltic States had battled to close down these exemptions, but lost out to a group of more conservative member states, including Germany, Italy, Hungary and Bulgaria, according to diplomatic sources. “The ‘sanctionistas’, Poland and the Balts, are afraid the others are missing the sense of urgency, especially as rockets are landing near their borders,” one EU diplomat said.

The EU also chose to exclude nuclear from a ban on all new investments in Russia’s energy sector. In the wake of the downing of MH17 in July 2014, the EU banned investment by EU firms into Russian Arctic oil fields, a measure that is now being extended to all new fossil fuel investments and other forms of financial support. The ban will not apply to nuclear power, as several eastern European countries operate Russian-built nuclear reactors and the technology is used in medicine. There is also a carve out to protect investments to bring oil and gas into the EU.

EU officials hailed a decision, agreed with the United States, to prohibit ratings agencies from reassessing Russia’s creditworthiness. Big ratings agencies, including Moody’s and Fitch, have slashed Russia’s rating to junk status, as they fear the ensuing recession will trigger a default on state debts. EU officials said the decision to ban new ratings of Russia and Russian companies was important because it would freeze existing junk status in global markets. “So there would be no new ratings, if there would be a recovery in future,” an EU official said.

There are reports that Russian forces have taken patients and medical staff of a hospital in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol as hostages.

According to the BBC, Mariupol’s deputy mayor Sergei Orlov said:

We received information that the Russian army captured our biggest hospital … and they’re using our patients and doctors like hostages.

We can confirm this information and also the governor of Donetsk region has confirmed this confirmation. We received information that there are 400 people there.

A journalist who interrupted a live news programme on Russian state TV last night to protest against the war in Ukraine has been fined 30,000 roubles (£215) by a Russian court.

A court found Marina Ovsyannikova guilty of flouting protest legislation, the Russian state news agency RIA reported.

Ovsyannikova, a Russian television producer, burst on to the set of Channel One during the national evening news on Monday, holding a poster that read “Stop the war. Don’t believe the propaganda. They’re lying to you here.”

Lawyers had been unable to find Ovsyannikova for nearly 24 hours after her protest, which was an extraordinary act of defiance given that Russia had ramped up its already strict censorship laws when the war began.

She reappeared on Tuesday evening in a Moscow courtroom alongside lawyer Anton Gashinsky. According to Novaya Gazeta, Ovsyannikova was charged with an administrative offence for holding an unauthorised protest.

In a photograph taken in the courtroom, Ovsyannikova appeared unharmed and was wearing the same necklace in the colours of the Ukrainian flag as during her protest.

More than 100 buses carrying civilians have left the besieged city of Sumy in north-eastern Ukraine for a safe area, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said.

The evacuation, organised by the ICRC and Ukrainian Red Cross, is made up of two separate convoys headed towards Poltava, in central Ukraine.

ICRC spokesperson Jason Straziuso told Reuters the buses might not be able to take a direct route to Poltava, adding that the Russian side had given a green light for the evacuation.

Earlier, ICR spokesperson Ewan Watson said more than 70 buses were ready in Sumy to evacuate civilians who had gathered ahead of a “safe passage” operation organised by the Red Cross.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has pleaded for Canada and its allies to do more to stop the Russian invasion of his country, including establishing a no-fly zone as civilian casualties mount, Leyland Cecco writes.

“How many more cruise missiles need to fall on our cities?” he asked in a televised address to Canada’s parliament, adding that 97 children had been killed so far.

Ahead of the speech, Canada’s House of Commons was tightly packed with lawmakers, their families and members of the public. dozens of parliamentarians were dressed in yellow and blue and wearing ribbons in support of Ukraine.

Calling Volodymyr Zelenskiy a friend, prime minister Justin Trudeau said the embattled nation had the full support of Canada.

We like to root for the underdog. We believe that when a cause is just and right, it will always prevail, no matter the size of the opponents.

This doesn’t mean it’ll be easy. Ukrainians are already paying incalculable human costs. This illegal and unnecessary war is a grave mistake. Putin must stop it now.

Speaking to a standing ovation, Zelenskiy asked lawmakers and the prime minister to imagine major Canadian cities and landmarks under attack.

Justin, can you imagine your children hearing all of these intense explosions?

Zelenskiy thanked Canada and European nations for providing weapons and humanitarian aid, which has been critical in blunting the Russian attack.

“Unfortunately this did not bring an end to the war,” he said.

Kharkhiv, Mariupol, are not protected like your cities are protected.

Zelenskiy said more was needed from European and North American nations, in addition to a growing list of sanctions targeting wealthy and influential Russians.

In a plea to Canada’s 1.4 million Ukrainians, the second largest diaspora in the world, Zelenskiy asked for their help.

We need your support. Show you’re more than Ukrainian history.

Fox News has confirmed its cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski was killed while reporting in Ukraine on Monday.

Fox News chief executive Suzanne Scott wrote to employees this morning:

It is with great sadness and a heavy heart that we share the news this morning regarding our beloved cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski.

Zakrzewski was with correspondent Benjamin Hall “when their vehicle was struck by incoming fire”, Scott said. Hall remains hospitalised in Ukraine, he added.

Pierre was a war zone photographer who covered nearly every international story for Fox News from Iraq to Afghanistan to Syria during his long tenure with us.

His passion and talent as a journalist were unmatched. Based in London, Pierre had been working in Ukraine since February.

Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg has been speaking at a press conference in Brussels, where he said defence ministers will be meeting tomorrow in a “defining moment for our security”.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is causing death and destruction every day, Stoltenberg said, and its actions have “shocked the world and shaken the international order”.

He said Russia was making “absurd claims” about biological labs and chemical weapons in Ukraine.

This is just another line and we are concerned that Moscow could stage a false flag operation, possibly including chemical weapons.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has created “a new security reality” on the European continent, he said.

We need to reset Nato’s military posture for this new reality.

Ministers will discuss concrete measures to reinforce Nato’s security for the longer term, Stoltenberg said. This could include “substantially more forces” in the eastern part of the alliance “at higher readiness and with more pre-positioned equipments”.

We will also consider major increases to our air and naval deployments, strengthening our integrated air and missile defence, reinforcing our cyber defences and holder more and larger exercises.

In his latest video address, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said five people were killed in Russian airstrikes on residential areas in the Kyiv region this morning.

In his remarks, Zelenskiy said humanitarian corridors had been able to partially open on Tuesday.

He said:

They destroyed four residential buildings, now we’re talking about five deaths in Kyiv.

Earlier today, Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said the number of people killed in this morning’s airstrikes on the Ukrainian capital was four.

Addressing Russian directly, said:

You bombed it today. This is in our capital, in the city which you refer to always as the mother of Russian cities.

Canada has announced it is to impose sanctions on 15 Russian officials who enabled and supported Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine to apply additional pressure on Moscow.

The new sanctions were announced ahead of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s expected virtual address to the Canadian parliament at 11.15am local time (3.15pm GMT), Reuters reported.

Canadian foreign minister Melanie Joly said:

President Putin made the choice to further his illegal and unjustifiable invasion, and he can also make the choice to end it by immediately ending the senseless violence and withdrawing his forces.

Canada will not hesitate to take further action should the Russian leadership fail to change course.

More than 70 buses are ready in the besieged city of Sumy in north-eastern Ukraine to evacuate civilians who have gathered ahead of a “safe passage” operation the Red Cross hopes to start on Tuesday, a spokesperson said.

“People have assembled, we hope it will go ahead as planned,” Ewan Watson, spokesperson of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), told Reuters in Geneva. “We are hoping at the very least to start this operation today.”

Earlier, Watson told a UN briefing in Geneva that the ICRC and Ukrainian Red Cross were hoping to organise the evacuation of two convoys of 30 buses to a safe area.

It comes as 2,000 civilian vehicles left the besieged Ukrainian port city of Mariupol on a so-called humanitarian corridor.

The city council said another 2,000 cars were waiting to leave along the evacuation route, which runs west for more than 160 miles to the Ukraine-held city of Zaporizhzhia.

City officials advised drivers to spend the night along the route unless they were close to Zaporizhzhia by evening. Mariupol had a population of 430,000 before the war.

Spanish authorities have detained a yacht owned by Russian oligarch Alexander Mikheyev, who is under European Union sanctions, according to a police source.

The Lady Anastasia cannot leave the marina of Port Adriano in Mallorca, where it is moored, the source told Reuters.

On Monday, the Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez said authorities had temporarily seized a Russian oligarch’s £108m yacht in Barcelona.

Sánchez told La Sexta television:

Today we seized – the technical term is provisionally immobilised – a yacht belonging to one of the principal oligarchs.

Russian prosecutors have asked a court to move jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny to a maximum security prison after requesting that he serve 13 years in prison on new fraud charges, AFP reports.

Navalny, Vladimir Putin’s most vocal critic in Russia, was jailed last year after surviving a poison attack he blames on the Kremlin.

Prosecutor Nadezhda Tikhonova was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies:

I request that Navalny be sentenced to a term of 13 years and a subsequent two years of probation.

It was not immediately clear if the 13 years include the two-and-a-half-year sentence he is serving at a prison camp east of Moscow for parole violations related to charges he says were trumped up.

The prosecutor also requested that Navalny pay a fine of 1.2m roubles (£8,250).

The Russian television producer who staged an extraordinary anti-war protest live on national television on Monday night outlined her plan to a friend the day before, having become increasingly angry about the Russian invasion, Pjotr Sauer and Andrew Roth report.

Marina Ovsyannikova burst on to the set of Channel One during the national evening news holding a poster that read “Stop the war. Don’t believe the propaganda. They’re lying to you here.” She was arrested shortly afterwards and has not been heard from since.

“The anger has been building up with her ever since the war started,” said a friend of Ovsyannikova’s, who asked to stay anonymous. “Two days ago, she told me how she was going to do it.”

The Guardian has seen a number of exchanged messages in which Ovsyannikova informs the friend about her plans. The friend said that Ovsyannikova, who has a Ukrainian parent, had been expressing deep unease over Russia’s actions since the war started.

Ovsyannikova also released a pre-recorded video via the OVD-Info human rights group in which she expressed her shame at working for Channel One. “Regrettably, for a number of years, I worked on Channel One and worked on Kremlin propaganda, I am very ashamed of this right now,” she said in the video.

Lawyers have been unable to find Ovsyannikova since her protest, which was an extraordinary act of defiance given that Russia had tightened its already strict censorship laws when the war began.

Her disappearance in police custody has raised concerns that she could be facing pressure to recant or that authorities could be preparing to slap her with more serious charges.

During the funeral in Lviv of four Ukrainian men, killed in a Russian military attack, the priest had to interrupt the ceremony due to an air raid alarm, Lorenzo Tondo reports.

The pastor had to stop family members carrying the coffins outside the church.

Hundreds of people attended the funerals of the four men, all soldiers, killed in the deadly Russian attack on a Ukrainian military base, in Yavoriv, on 15 March, near the Polish border, where, in total, 35 people were killed.

The four men were of different ages. The youngest was born in 1991, the oldest in 1966.

Once the air raid alarm was over, the priest resumed the ceremony and the coffins were carried outside to be buried in a cemetery in the city.

It is just past 3pm in Ukraine.

The United Nations has called on Russian authorities to make sure that an anti-war protester who interrupted Russian state television is not punished for exercising her right to free speech.

Earlier today, the Kremlin said the actions of a woman who interrupted a live news bulletin on Russia’s state TV Channel One on Monday night to denounce the war in Ukraine amounted to “hooliganism”.

The protester, in an extraordinary act of dissent, held up a sign behind the studio presenter and shouted slogans denouncing the war in Ukraine, Reuters reported.

Ravina Shamdasani, UN human rights spokesperson, told reporters today that Russian authorities should ensure that the woman “does not face any reprisals for exercising her right to freedom of expression”.

The protester was later identified as Maria Ovsyannikova, an employee of Russia Channel One, according to OVD-Info, an independent human rights protest-monitoring group.

A lawyer for Ovsyannikova told CNN today that he has been trying to locate his client since her protest on Monday, and still does not know where she is.

Dmitry Zakhvatov confirmed that Ovsyannikova is the woman seen on air holding the sign and that she is an editor for the channel.

The EU has imposed sanctions on the boss of anti-war protester Marina Ovsyannikova at Russia’s Channel One, along with Chelsea football club owner Roman Abramovich for his “very good relations with Vladimir Putin”, Daniel Boffey and Jennifer Rankin report.

Konstantin Ernst, the chief executive of the state-controlled TV channel, and Abramovich are among 15 individuals newly targeted by the EU.

Along with the extended list of individuals on whom asset freeze and travel bans are imposed, to be published later on Tuesday, the EU is also banning investments in Russia’s energy sector, as well as exports of finished steel products and most luxury goods, such as precious stones, clothes and carpets, over the value of €300 (£252) and cars worth more than €50,000.

There is also a complete transaction ban with nine Russian state-owned enterprises and the EU has prohibited the rating of the country and its companies by credit rating agencies.

Brussels has made a discernible effort to squeeze individuals and entities that have aided Putin in spreading his message about the invasion of Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin plans to order the mass logging of Ukrainian forests to be sold as lumber in Russia, a document published by Ukraine’s military intelligence claims.

The document, published by the Ukrainian defence intelligence today, reportedly shows a letter from Russia’s minister of defence, Sergei Shoigu, addressed to the Russian president.

The letter discusses the subject of “the possibility of felling on defence lands”, Ukrainian intelligence claims, with the money from the sale of the wood going to funding the Russian army.

Note: the Guardian has not been able to verify these reports.

The number of people killed in airstrikes on the Ukrainian capital this morning has risen to four, according to Kyiv’s mayor Vitali Klitschko.

A series of Russian strikes hit a residential neighbourhood in Kyiv on Tuesday morning, igniting a huge fire and prompting a frantic rescue effort in a 15-storey apartment building. Emergency services earlier said two people were killed.

Reuters is now reporting that the death toll from today’s airstrikes has been updated to four.

Mayor Vitali Klitschko posted on Telegram:

Rescuers are still extinguishing the flames from early morning.

Civilians trapped in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol are “essentially being suffocated with no aid”, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

People in Mariupol are “facing the impossible choices of how to feed their families and themselves and are trapped”, an ICRC spokesperson said today.

The Red Cross is hoping to organise the evacuation of civilians in two convoys of some 30 buses out of the north-eastern Ukrainian city of Sumy and their passage to a safe area, Ewan Watson said.

The planned operation out of Sumy would be carried out with the Ukrainian Red Cross but was not yet under way, he said.

We are moving towards Sumy with a view to facilitate safe passage of civilians out, we are hoping that does take place as planned.

He noted there had been delays with similar evacuations from Mariupol, where he said people are “essentially being suffocated in this city now with no aid”.

We know of families undoing oil heaters to take water out as a last resort to have something to drink.

Meanwhile, Reuters reports that Turkey’s foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, said he hoped to evacuate Turkish citizens from Mariupol on Tuesday or Wednesday, after a phone call with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.

He told reporters:

The conditions for the evacuation of our citizens from Mariupol are emerging. We expect good news today or tomorrow.

Fourteen thousand eight hundred Turkish citizens had been evacuated from Ukraine so far amid Russia’s invasion, Çavuşoğlu added.

Earlier today, Turkish defence ministry sources said Ankara was awaiting approval from Russian authorities for the Mariupol evacuation, pending a security evaluation.

The sources said landmines in the area had been cleared, and work is continuing to open humanitarian corridors and for buses to enter the city.

Ukraine appealed for a global army of IT experts to help in the battle against Putin – and many answered the call.

The Guardian’s Chris Stokel-Walker and Dan Milmo spoke to people on the digital frontline …

The Kremlin said on Tuesday that the actions of a woman who interrupted a live news bulletin on Russia’s state TV Channel One on Monday to denounce the war in Ukraine amounted to “hooliganism”.

The protester, in an extraordinary act of dissent, held up a sign behind the studio presenter and shouted slogans denouncing the war in Ukraine, Reuters reported.

“As far as this woman is concerned, this is hooliganism,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters, praising Channel One for what he called its quality, objective and timely programming.

German supermarkets are reporting a run on sunflower oil, amid fears that the war in Ukraine could cause supply shortages. Ukraine provides over 50% of the world market in sunflower oil, with Germany one of its largest importers.

“In our stores we are currently noticing an increased demand especially for sunflower oil, as well as rapeseed oil and olive oil”, said a spokesperson for supermarket chain Aldi Süd.

A spokesperson for sister company Aldi Nord told broadsheet Die Welt that the chain would reserve the right to temporarily restrict sale of sunflower oil per customer.

A spokesperson for the Federal Association of the German Retail Grocery Trade urged people to refrain from hoarding and show “solidarity” to other shoppers, “as at the start of the corona crisis”.

Turkey’s foreign minister said on Tuesday he expected to evacuate citizens from Ukraine’s southern port city of Mariupol on Tuesday or Wednesday, he told reporters after a phone call with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.

“The conditions for the evacuation of our citizens from Mariupol are emerging. We expect good news today or tomorrow,” Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said in Ankara.

He added that 14,800 Turkish citizens had been evacuated from Ukraine so far, and that Turkish officials held a meeting with Ukrainian negotiators on Tuesday, Reuters reported.

Ukraine’s foreign ministry said on Saturday that Russian forces had shelled the Sultan Suleiman mosque in Mariupol, where more than 80 adults and children, including Turks, have taken refuge.

Earlier on Tuesday, defence ministry sources said Ankara was awaiting approval from Russian authorities for the Mariupol evacuation, pending a security evaluation.

The sources said landmines in the area had been cleared, and work was continuing to open humanitarian corridors and for buses to enter the city.

UK ministers have imposed a series of new export bans and tariffs on Russian products, the morning after the passage of the economic crime bill, intended to make it swifter and easier to target oligarchs and Russian interests.

The UK will deny Russia and Belarus access to WTO most-favoured nation tariffs for hundreds of their exports, a statement from the trade department and Treasury said, with an initial list of goods facing additional 35% tariffs.

Russian vodka is among products affected by the increases, while the export ban is billed as affecting areas such as luxury vehicles, high-end fashion and works of art going from the UK to Russia.

Former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder met the Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich in Moscow for several hours last Thursday, tabloid Bild reports this morning.

The purpose of the Gazprom lobbyist’s one-man diplomatic mission, and upon whose request it took place, remains unclear.

Schröder, who hasn’t stepped down from his roles as supervisory board chairman at Nord Stream AG and Rosneft in spite of appeals by the German government, also met with the head of the Russian delegations in talks with Ukraine, Vladimir Medinsky, after travelling to Moscow last Wednesday.

Bild reported that Schröder met Abramovich on Thursday night at the luxury Kempinski hotel, near the Kremlin.

German chancellor Olaf Scholz’s team said last week they had only found out about the ex-chancellor’s dash to Moscow via the press, while the Ukrainian side denied it had tasked Schröder to act as an intermediary to his long-time friend Vladimir Putin.

Russian aviation authorities have fired an official who said last week that China had refused to supply Russian airlines with aircraft parts in the wake of Western sanctions, the Kommersant newspaper reported on Tuesday, citing sources and the official.

Valery Kudinov, an official at Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency (Rosaviatsia) responsible for maintaining airplane airworthiness, said Russia was in talks to source parts from countries including Turkey and India after a failed attempt to obtain them from China.

An industry source confirmed to Reuters that Kudinov had been sacked, adding that he lost his job because of his public statements about China. Rosaviatsia declined to comment, Reuters reported.

Russian newspaper Kommersant cited Kudinov as saying that he had been fired for disclosing information under a federal law governing how civil servants must behave.

Russia’s aviation sector is being squeezed by Western sanctions over the invasion of Ukraine.

Almost 89,000 people have offered homes to Ukrainian refugees in the first hours of a government scheme that allows families and individuals to bring them to the UK.

The website for registering interest in the scheme crashed for a short while because of the numbers offering homes. By 9am on Tuesday, 88,712 had joined the scheme. The Foreign Office minister, James Cleverly, said “10,000 people every hour” were signing up.

A spokesman said the Homes for Ukraine website “temporarily stalled” after it went live late on Monday afternoon, owing to the “enormous generosity of the British public”. He said the total number of offers was continuing to rise, with offers doubling within hours.

Almost 3 million people have fled Ukraine since the Russian invasion, with more internally displaced as cities are shelled.

Until Monday, only Ukrainians with family links to the UK could apply for visas that would give them access to work and benefits.

But on Monday Michael Gove announced that sponsors could bring any Ukrainian to the UK to live in their home for a minimum of six months, for which they would receive a £350 monthly payment.

Under the scheme, refugees will be allowed to live and work in the UK for up to three years and receive full and unrestricted access to benefits, healthcare, employment and other support.

An adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskiy said on Tuesday that the war in Ukraine was at a crossroads that could lead to an agreement at talks with Russia or a new Russian offensive.

“We are at a crossroads. Either we will agree at the current talks or the Russians will make a second attempt [at an offensive] and then there will be talks again,” adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said.

It came as a British Foreign Office minister has said he “hopes” talks between Russia and Ukraine progress towards ending aggression.

Asked on the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland programme if he thinks the talks between the two sides will yield a positive outcome, James Cleverly said: “I hope so.”

But he added that the invasion has not been as successful as the Kremlin had first hoped, PA Media reported.

“We have seen a lot of disinformation coming out of Russia, we’ve seen a lot of dishonesty coming out of Vladimir Putin,” he said on Tuesday.

“But the simple fact is that the attack that he thought was going to be so easy has proven to be anything but easy.

“The Ukrainians - from President Zelenskiy to those students that have signed up to join the defence force - the defence of their country has been amazing and they have forced Russia to reconsider the attacks.”

Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich is described as a “Russian oligarch who has long and close ties to Vladimir Putin”, in a copy of the EU’s legal text relating to its latest sanctions package due to be published later today.

It says:

He has had privileged access to the president, and has maintained very good relations with him.

This connection with the Russian leader helped him to maintain his considerable wealth.

He is a major shareholder of the steel group Evraz, which is one of Russia’s largest taxpayers.

Ukraine will make a fresh attempt to deliver supplies to civilians trapped in the encircled city of Mariupol on Tuesday, deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk said.

Moscow on Monday allowed the first convoy of civilians to escape Mariupol, but a senior presidential aide said Russia had again blocked a humanitarian aid convoy trying to reach the city with supplies, Reuters reported.

Obtaining safe passage for aid to reach Mariupol and for civilians to leave has been Kyiv’s main demand at several rounds of talks. Previous attempts at a local ceasefire in the area have failed.

Vereshchuk said a convoy with humanitarian supplies would head for Mariupol on Tuesday. “On the way back it will pick up women and children,” she said.

Civilians have been trapped in the southern port city by Russian shelling for more than two weeks and have been without heating, electricity and running water for most of this time, the Ukrainian authorities say.

A convoy of at least 160 cars left the city on Monday, local officials said, but many more residents remain in Mariupol.

Firefighters battled flames at a residential building the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv on Tuesday after a series of Russian artillery strikes.

Earlier in the morning, a projectile was seen over the city’s skyline, followed by a bright flash and a series of explosions.

It is not known if the projectile was a part of the Russian strikes or an intercepting missile from Ukrainian ground forces.

Boris Johnson has urged the west to end its “addiction” to Russian fuel as he heads for Saudi Arabia in a push for increased oil output.

In an article for the Daily Telegraph, the UK prime minister said western leaders had made a “terrible mistake” by letting President Vladimir Putin “get away with” annexing Crimea in 2014 and becoming more dependent on Russian power sources.

No 10 confirmed the prime would travel to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday evening despite an outcry over the regime’s execution of 81 men on Saturday. Johnson will have talks with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the hope Saudi Arabia can raise its production of oil and gas to make up for a reduced reliance on Russia.

Johnson said the west’s “addiction” to Russian fuel had “emboldened” Putin to bomb civilians during his invasion of Ukraine, while at the same time profiting from soaring global oil and gas prices.

Russia’s defence ministry spokesperson Igor Konashenkov said on Tuesday that Russian forces had taken full control of all territory in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, Russian news agencies reported.

Russian forces shot down six Bayraktar TB-2 drones in the last 24 hours, the Interfax news agency reported, citing the ministry.

Reuters could not verify the reports independently.

The British Ministry of Defence (MoD) says Russia has reportedly installed its own mayor in the city of Melitopol following the alleged abduction of his predecessor on Friday.

In an intelligence update, MoD said it was reported Russian forces have also fired warning shots at protesters as demonstrations broke out in occupied areas of Ukraine.

“Reporting suggests that Russia may seek to stage a ‘referendum’ in Kherson in an attempt to legitimise the area as a ‘breakaway republic’ similar to Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea,” it added.

I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest on Russia’s war in Ukraine over the next four hours.

We’ve just reported on Boris Johnson’s trip to Saudi today to persuade the kingdom to pump more oil and help ease reliance on Russian fossil fuels.

The background to this question is what our diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour has called a “giant geopolitical game of chess” in a piece looking at whether the west relly can wean itself off Russian supplies – what he calls Vladimir Putin’s “sacred cash cow”.

Here is his piece:

There are pictures of firefighters tackling a blaze at an apartment block in Kyiv this morning after it was hit by a Russian missile attack. A picture also shows an elderly resident waiting to be rescued.

If you’re just getting going for the day or just need a quick catchup on what’s going on, we have a full report wrapping in all the most important developments of the past few hours.

They include the latest address by Volodymyr Zelenskiy, China’s denial of claims it is supplying Russia with equipment and arms, and a claim by an adviser to the Ukraine president that the war could be over by May.

We’ve also got some video of the attack on Kyiv where you can see the city lit up by a bright flash followed by a very loud bang.

China has denied claims by US officials that Russia had sought military assistance in Ukraine and accused Washington of spreading “malicious disinformation” that risked escalating the conflict.

After a tense day-long meeting between Chinese and US officials in Rome on Monday, Washington said it feared China had already starting supplying arms and equipment to Russia.

But the Chinese embassy in London told Reuters in a statement: “The US has repeatedly spread malicious disinformation against China on the Ukraine issue. China has been playing a constructive role in promoting peace talks.

“The top priority now is to ease the situation, instead of adding fuel to the fire, and work for diplomatic settlement rather than further escalate the situation.”

Read our full story here:

Nearly all of the Russian military offensives in Ukraine remain stalled after making little progress over the weekend, according to a Penatgon briefing. Russian troops are still about 15km (9 miles) from the center of Kyiv, a US defence official said, Reuters reports.

The official noted that the US believed Russia was trying to “flow in forces behind the advance elements” moving to the north of the Ukrainian capital.

The assaults on the cities of Chernihiv and Kharkiv also remain stalled, the official said, but Russia has split off a force of 50 to 60 vehicles to move towards the town of Izium.

Ukraine continues to defend Mariupol, though the city remains isolated, they said. Russian forces have also not moved closer to the town of Mykolaiv.

An official told reporters:

We still maintain the airspace is contested, that the Russians have not achieved air superiority over all of Ukraine.

Our Today in Focus podcast is about the notorious Russian mercenary company Wagner Group.

It has has supported pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine since its inception in 2014 and is now believed to be playing a major role in the invasion of the whole of Ukraine.

Officially, the company does not exist. It has no company registration, no tax returns, no recruitment office. Officially, private military companies remain illegal in Russia.

Pjortr Sauer has reported on the Wagner Group for the Guardian and he recently interviewed Marat Gabidullin, a former mercenary who joined the group in 2015.

He tells Nosheen Iqbal that Wagner is an unofficial foreign policy tool of the Kremlin.

Asian markets are struggling again, with Hong Kong tech firms leading another sharp equity selloff in the city following the Covid-19 shutdown of tech hub Shenzhen and worries over Russia’s military outreach to China, Reuters reports.

Concerns about China’s economic outlook saw oil prices suffer fresh selling pressure, with WTI falling back below $100 a week after it hit a 14-year high on the back of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Hopes for progress in talks to bring an end to the war in eastern Europe were also putting pressure on the black gold.

Global markets have been in a spiral since Russian troops marched into the neighbouring country, leading international powers to impose crippling sanctions on the country and numerous companies to pull out.

Here is how the UK papers are reporting the war today:

Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s latest address implores Russian troops to surrender. he says they “have a chance to live” if they choose to lay down their arms.

“On behalf of the Ukrainian people, we give you a chance to live. If you surrender to our forces, we will treat you as humans have to be treated: with dignity. The way you have not been treated in your army. And the way your army doesn’t treat our people. Choose.”

He also said that the war in Russia had become a “nightmare” for the Russian military because it was losing a lot of troops and equipment.

However, he said that talks with Russia would continue on Tuesday.